Before Bret Harte left California he had been in correspondence with some persons in Chicago who proposed to make him Editor and part proprietor of a magazine called the “Lakeside Monthly.” A dinner was arranged to take place soon after his arrival in Chicago at which Mr. Harte might meet the men who were to furnish the capital for this purpose. But the guest of the evening did not appear. Many stories were told in explanation of his absence; and Bret Harte’s own account is thus stated by Mr. Noah Brooks:—“When I met Harte in New York I asked him about the incident, and he said: ‘In Chicago I stayed with relations of my wife’s, who lived on the North Side, or the East Side, or the Northeast Side, or the Lord knows where, and when I accepted an invitation to dinner in a hotel in the centre of the city, I expected that a guide would be sent me. I was a stranger in a strange city; a carriage was not easily to be obtained in the neighborhood where I was, and, in utter ignorance of the way I should take to reach the hotel, I waited for a guide until the hour for dinner had passed, and then sat down, as your friend S. P. D. said to you in California “en famille, with my family.” That’s all there was to it.’”
Mr. Pemberton, commenting on this explanation says, “I can readily picture Bret Harte, as the unwelcome dinner hour approached, making excuses to himself for himself and conjuring up that hitherto unsuggested ‘guide.’”
That Mr. Pemberton was right as to the “guide” being an afterthought, is proved by the following account, for which the author of this book is indebted to Mr. Francis F. Browne, at that time editor of the “Lakeside Monthly”: “I remember quite clearly Mr. Harte’s visit to my office,—a small,[84] rather youthful looking but alert young man of pleasing manners and conversation. We talked of the literary situation, and he seemed impressed with the opportunity offered by Chicago for a high-class literary enterprise. A day or two after his arrival here Mr. Harte was invited to a dinner at the house of a prominent citizen, to meet the gentlemen who were expected to become interested in the magazine project with him. Mr. Harte accepted the invitation. There is no doubt that he intended going, for he was in my office the afternoon of the dinner, and left about five o’clock, saying he was going home to dress for the occasion. But he did not appear at the dinner; nor did he send any explanation whatever. There being then no telephones, no explanation was given until the next day, and it was then to the effect that he had supposed a carriage would be sent for him, and had waited for it until too late to start. A friend of the author tells me that he had previously asked Mr. Harte whether he should call for him and take him to the dinner; but Harte assured him that this was not at all necessary, that he knew perfectly well how to find the place. The other members of the party, however, were on hand, and after waiting, with no little surprise, for the chief guest to appear, they proceeded to eat their dinner and disperse; but Mr. Harte and the project of a literary connection with him in Chicago no longer interested them.”
It is evident that for some reason, unknown outside of his own family, Bret Harte could not or would not attend the dinner, and simply remained away. The result was thus stated by the author himself in a letter to a friend in California: “I presume you have heard through the public press how nearly I became editor and part owner of the ‘Lakeside,’ and how the childishness and provincial character of a few of the principal citizens of Chicago spoiled the project.”
Bret Harte, therefore, continued Eastward, leaving Chicago on February 11, “stopping over” a few days in Syracuse, and reaching New York on February 20. His stories and poems—especially the Heathen Chinee—had lifted him to such a pinnacle of renown that his progress from the Pacific to the Atlantic was detailed by the newspapers with almost as much particularity as were the movements of Admiral Dewey upon his return to the United States after the capture of Manilla. The commotion thus caused extended even to England, and a London paper spoke humorously, but kindly, of the “Bret Harte circular,” which recorded the daily events of the author’s life.
“The fame of Bret Harte,” remarked the “New York Tribune,” as the railroad bore him toward that city, “has so brilliantly shot to the zenith as to render any comments on his poems a superfluous task. The verdict of the popular mind has only anticipated the voice of sound criticism.”
In New York Mr. Harte and his family went immediately to the house of his sister, Mrs. F. F. Knaufft, at number 16 Fifth Avenue; and with her they spent the greater part of the next two years. Three days after their arrival in New York the whole family went to Boston, Mr. Harte being engaged to dine with the famous Saturday Club, and being desirous of seeing his publishers. He arrived in Boston February 25, his coming having duly been announced by telegrams published in all the papers. Upon the morning of his arrival the “Boston Advertiser” had the following pleasant notice of the event. “He will have a hearty welcome from many warm friends to whom his face is yet strange; and after a journey across the continent, in which his modesty must have been tried almost as severely as his endurance by the praises showered upon him, we hope that he will find Boston so pleasant, even in the soberest dress which she wears during the year, that he may tarry long among us.”
In Boston, or rather at Cambridge, just across Charles River, Bret Harte was to be the guest of Mr. Howells, then the assistant Editor of the “Atlantic Monthly,” James Russell Lowell being the Editor-in-Chief. Mr. Howells’ account[85] of this visit is so interesting, and throws so much light upon Bret Harte’s character, that it is impossible to refrain from quoting it here:—
“When the adventurous young Editor who had proposed being his host for Boston, while Harte was still in San Francisco, and had not yet begun his princely progress Eastward, read of the honors that attended his coming from point to point, his courage fell, as if he perhaps had committed himself in too great an enterprise. Who was he, indeed, that he should think of making this dear son of memory, great heir of fame, his guest, especially when he heard that in Chicago Harte failed of attending a banquet of honor because the givers of it had not sent a carriage to fetch him to it, as the alleged use was in San Francisco? Whether true or not, and it was probably not true in just that form, it must have been this rumor which determined his host to drive into Boston for him with the handsomest hack which the livery of Cambridge afforded, and not trust to the horse-car and the express to get him and his baggage out, as he would have done with a less portentous guest.
“However it was, he instantly lost all fear when they met at the station, and Harte pressed forward with his cordial hand-clasp, as if he were not even a fairy prince, and with that voice and laugh which were surely the most winning in the world. The drive out from Boston was not too long for getting on terms of personal friendship with the family which just filled the hack, the two boys intensely interested in the novelties of a New England city and suburb, and the father and mother continually exchanging admiration of such aspects of nature as presented themselves in the leafless sidewalk trees, and patches of park and lawn. They found everything so fine, so refined, after the gigantic coarseness of California, where the natural forms were so vast that one could not get on companionable terms with them. Their host heard them with misgiving for the world of romance which Harte had built up among those huge forms, and with a subtle perception that this was no excursion of theirs to the East, but a lifelong exodus from the exile which he presently understood they must always have felt California to be. It is different now, when people are every day being born in California, and must begin to feel it home from the first breath, but it is notable that none of the Californians of that great early day have gone back to live amidst the scenes which inspired and prospered them.